Publish to more eyes on NovelGens
I’ve been hard at work on a ton of experimental worldbuilding projects and I’m really excited to finally release a huge feature rework and redesign for NovelGens.
In short, the update is themed around highlighting the wonderful stories and artwork our talented users have submitted so far — and creating a platform for creatives like you to continue to share your worlds with a new audience.
I hope you enjoy these changes; I’ve put a lot of love and labor into the site and I’m more excited every day to see hundreds of people now using it, both to claim creatures to use in their own worlds and to share stories and art with others. Thank you!
So… here’s what’s new!
Your stories and art are now highlighted on the new homepage
For a full-size version of the screenshot, you can click here to see the homepage yourself. You still see today’s generated creature and some recently-generated creatures to browse through, but now your stories and artwork bubble up for everyone to see, too. They’re also still visible in their normal spots on each creature and environment page, too.
Dive into the new stories-only homepage
You can now get a feed of stories to read at the new NovelGens Stories page. You can also click “Discover > Read stories” in the navbar to jump here any time. Stories are labeled with the creatures they depict, as well as the environments they’re set in, so readers can quickly decide which story they’re most interested in.
Admire the new art-only homepage
If the amazing art on NovelGens is more your style, you can also browse submitted images at the new NovelGens Art page. Art is sorted chronologically by default, so you never miss something new. If your art is well received, you might also see it bubble up the “Top” or “Trending” pages as it gets more kudos, too!
Manage your stories and art from one place
If you’re a creator, there’s a new page to list all of the stories and artwork you’ve drafted or submitted to NovelGens. You can access it by clicking “Account > My Content” while logged in or by clicking here.
Add rich-text embeds to your stories
There’s a lot more polish and improvements around the site besides the above new pages, but one to specifically call out is our support for rich-text embeds in any story. Simply paste a supported link into your story and it’ll automatically expand into an interactable box as soon as you preview or publish that story.
This means you can now add audio, images, links, and other rich text to your stories that you couldn’t before! Supported domains include (but are not limited to) Amazon, Bandcamp, Google Docs, Instagram, Mixcloud, Soundcloud, Trello, Twitter, Typeform, Vimeo, Wikipedia, and YouTube.
And, of course, general polish around the site
Bugs have been squashed, typos have been fixed, and a lot of the site has been better optimized for mobile devices. The new design should scale better across every screen size and things should load faster as well as use less memory, making the site more available to anyone that’s interested in creating beastiaries and building fictional worlds.
There’s still a lot more to do to make NovelGens great, and I can’t wait to get started on the next project. If you have feedback on how to improve the site, please join us on Discord and let me know your thoughts!
Happy worldbuilding!
— Andrew
